1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a driving safety auxiliary communication system and, in particular, to an administration system and method for the communications in a driving safety auxiliary communication system.
2. Description of Related Art
Most traffic accidents are resulted from dangerous driving happened in random. And the reactions of drivers to the dangerous driving often determine whether the trifling potential traffic accident will happen and whether it will become a major traffic accident.
As vehicle computers become popular, vehicles are equipped with more electronic functions, such as driving record, abnormal condition record, auto braking, parking distance control (PDC), and vehicle condition communications. The PDC function can directly notify the driver about objects that are too close to the vehicle, helping the driver to maneuver the vehicle safely. However, the PDC device only provides warnings about obstacles within a certain range when the driver backs the vehicle. It cannot provide the driver sufficient reaction time when the vehicle moves forward or another vehicle suddenly approaches. Therefore, drivers currently cannot know in advance possible dangerous driving on the street and have sufficient time to avoid traffic accidents.
In the wake of this, some people have proposed to install wireless communication devices inside vehicles and use a specific communication protocol in between, so that each vehicle and its neighboring vehicles can form a mobile wireless network and broadcasts message to exchange messages to each other. As a consequence, each vehicle obtains broadcast message of moving states of the other vehicles, achieving pre-warning effects.
A conventional system is used to exchange vehicle messages between vehicles in a specific network. Each vehicle has a controller, a sensing unit, a display, and a communicator. The sensing unit further includes a GPS receiver, a gyroscope, an acceleration sensor, a weather sensor, and an electronic map. The controller collects the road information, road curvature, and current traffic light obtained by the electronic map along with the current speed, direction, braking light, turning light, etc obtained by the sensing unit. Through the wireless communication device installed on the vehicle, the controller broadcasts the driving messages of the vehicle. Each of the neighboring vehicles can receive the driving messages of that vehicle. Moreover, through safety determining logic of its own, each vehicle determines the driving states of adjacent vehicles. If any neighboring vehicles were driving abnormally, it sends a warning to the corresponding driver. Therefore, in addition to broadcasting driving messages, each vehicle can further obtain the driving messages transmitted from neighboring vehicles. Consequently, as shown in FIG. 15, if there is a car 50′ in an accident in the front, it can transmit such driving message to neighboring vehicles 51′, which then relay the message to vehicles 52′ further back.
Based on foregoing description, each vehicle simply and continuously broadcasts own driving messages or receives the driving messages of others. When the number of vehicles increases, it may happen that message packets jam the network so that the messages often collide and fail in transmissions. Once some packets of the driving messages fail to transmit, they have to wait a certain time to be resent. This loses the desired real-time exchanges of driving messages. Therefore, the above-mentioned system cannot provide complete anti-collision warnings.
Another technique of a vehicle to vehicle communication protocol is primarily used as a communication protocol in the driving information management system of the above-mentioned system. The communication protocol can determine the priorities of messages generated by a vehicle before sending them out. By improving the usage efficiency of the limited channel bandwidth, this technique can avoid failures of sending highly important driving messages. To further enhance the packets delivery rate, the driving messages with high importance will be broadcasted longer time and more trials than that of low-priority ones. This communication protocol further classifies the priorities of driving conditions on highways to reduce the quantity of packets and avoid the possibilities of packet collisions. For example, suppose one drives on a highway and there is a traffic accident in the front. The vehicle in the front sends a high priority message to neighboring vehicles in the back, notifying the drivers thereof and preventing car accidents. Since this is designed for highway driving, the importance of driving messages is classified according to the changes in the behavior of drivers.
With reference to FIG. 16, the communication protocol proposed in the above-mentioned communication protocol has a more prominent effect on vehicles running on highways or expressways. When the vehicle in the front 61′ accelerates relative to the current vehicle 60′, the current vehicle 60′ receives the driving messages about the changed driving behavior of the front vehicle. Since front vehicle 61′ is in front of the current vehicle 60′, the current vehicle 60′ evaluates that the front vehicle 61′ has a high correlation with the current vehicle 60′. Immediately, the current vehicle 60′ determines that the front vehicle has a potential danger and warns the driver of the current vehicle about the situation.
The above description indicates that there are technologies about forming a mobile wireless network among vehicles. By exchanging driving messages, the information of potentially risky road or vehicle conditions can be rapidly distributed. It can even evaluate potentially dangerous vehicle to the current vehicle. Nevertheless, the above-mentioned two technologies cannot be applied to all kinds of road conditions. In particular, when the wireless communication network is blocked by terrains, the above-mentioned effects of those technologies cannot be achieved. Therefore, it is imperative to provide a more effective and reliable wireless communication system for drivers.